Quotes from Ram Dass

And it all just is, but without form. Because in order to know form, we have to be separate from it.

Now isn't preparation for later. Here and now is it. There is a spaciousness, an acceptance of what is in the moment, that says, "Yes, ah so!" to everything, whether it's ugly, beautiful, boring, confused, dead, angry, the dark night of the soul, or the brilliant light of the spirit. This is just the way it is. And in just the way it is, is the spirit.

When you get to those edges where you say, "I can't handle that" or "I'm not going to do that," take a look at the mindset you are holding onto. There is the root of your suffering. That's where your mind is in relation to what is.

Rumi, the Persian mystic: "I died as stone, and rose again as plant. I died as plant, and became an animal. I died as animal, and was born a man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? Yet once more shall I die as man, to soar with the angels. But even from angelhood, I must pass on. For all is change, except the face of God.

Hafiz the poet said, "O thou who are trying to learn the marvel of love from the copybook of reason, I'm very much afraid that you will never really see the point.

It was as if you were proving the obvious. Somebody who had taken the placebo which made their skin crawl reacted by saying, "Well, maybe something's happening", and then another minister would stagger into the room and say, "I see God! I see God!" and it was all too obvious in a short time who had had the psylocybin.

Motivations and desires affect our perceptions. We don't necessarily see things as they are. We see them as we are.

affluence has bought us privacy, and the apparent power to guard it against the encroachments of other people's adversity.

It's not the crow's feet under your eyes that make you old, Or the gray in your hair, I'm told. But when your mind makes a contract your body can't fill, You're over the hill, brother, you're over the hill.

Rilke advised, "with all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek for the answers that cannot be given, for you wouldn't be able to live with them, and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now, and perhaps without knowing it, you will live along someday into the answers.

of it. I felt that the theories I was teaching in psychology didn't make it, that the psychologists didn't really have a grasp of the human condition, and that the theories I was teaching, which

You are my connection to the place in myself where I am love, and I can't get there without you.

When you have started to awaken and see that there are other planes of reality that are equally valid to the one which presently exists, you learn how to live more or less with more and more planes simultaneously, which is what freedom is about. It's not totally standing in one plane, it's not standing anywhere at all.

The caterpillar does not become a flying caterpillar; it morphs into a butterfly.

As you awaken, you realize that personal karma is just another illusion. The illusion is that this is the only reality. The witness helps you to see that there are choices, different ways to perceive reality.

The goal of the path is to BE high, not GET high.

The more conscious that a being becomes, the more he can use any occupation as a vehicle for spreading light.

A lineage that is pure is one that catapults us ultimately out the other end; it isn't designed to make us followers of the lineage. It is designed to take us through itself and free us at the other end.

woman once came to Gandhi with her young son. "Mahatma-ji, tell my son to stop eating sugar. It's not good for him." Gandhi told her to return with her son in a week's time. When they returned, Gandhi said to the boy, "Stop eating sugar." The woman was perplexed and asked Gandhi why he couldn't have told the boy that a week earlier. Gandhi replied, "Because at that time I had not given up sugar." What

But greater than any earthly sacrifice is the sacrifice of sacred wisdom, for wisdom is in truth the end of all holy work.

You learn it all, and then you offer it all up.

It's the pysical plane, the astral plane, the causal plane - all the conceptual levels of form, all the way back to pure idea.

About the miracle babas Maharajji would say, "What is this? This is all foolishness." He could do miracles, but the greatest miracle was that he could turn one's heart and mind toward God, as he did for me.

The journey of consciousness is about arriving at a balance in life where you are open to the mystery of it all. You can't be open when you're loaded down with a lot of conceptual stuff. In my own consciousness, I watch how long it takes, when an expectation isn't fulfilled, before I come back again to being in the present moment. How long before I can let go of not getting what I wanted, and just be with what is?